Pricey Drugs

So after years of wondering about the bizarre numbers that the press come up with every time there is a 'huge' haul of ecstacy taken by the cops, I finally did the maths.

Today's story in the Sydney Morning Herald claims a haul of $12 million dollar's worth, or 142000 pills. What I want to know is, who the hell is spending $85 per pill when they are commonly available for between $25-40?

I think that for $85 per pill I would want pure MDMA sprinkled with gold flakes, each accesorised with an ivory-handled crushing and snorting kit, plus keys for the night to a Sydney Harbour waterfront penthouse. Good grief. Not even the drug-supply derived South Coast experienced inflation of that level.

I wonder if a carton of milk in journalistic mathematics world commonly inflates from $2 to $8, or what other magical number games are going on there...

New Stuff!

I started my kick-arse new job today. Yes, indeed. KICK-ARSE! I intend to vacillate between the English and the American spellings of arse/ass much the way my accent currently vacillates between the Australian and American pronunciations. I love my job. Love at first day. Apart from the fact that it involves looking at penises all day, which I admit is a bit wierd. But you know, penises are a small price to pay for an excellent job with convenient hours at a rapidly expanding company full of exciting, facially pierced queers. I feel like the lesbian bringing the U-haul on the second date, but baby, I want to be here for a while.

The company encourages me to spend as much time as possible watching gay porn to develop my own aesthetic of how to sell the stuff. I love the company.

I am in the middle of moving to my new place in the hippy/dero area of town (those of you in the habit of listening to San Francisco based songs may recognise the Haight-Ashbury region). So I hope that goes well. I will not be sad to see the last of my current little corner of suburbia.

And in stranger news, I have lost all feeling from my left pinky finger. I have no idea why. I can still move it, but not easily. The numbness extends down into that side of my hand. Being a left-hander, it's making it hard to write with a pen anymore. I guess I should go see a doctor about it. It would suck to have to learn to write with my right hand, not to mention the difficulty of having to change sex-hands.

(other people have sex-hands, right? You know... the one that winds up seeing most of the action? Or are most other people sexually ambidextrous?)

Hey Mama, Lock Your Boys Up

There are bears in this city! Having a conference! It makes things more fun, I like seeing them everywhere.

Saturday night was the Butch-Femme Winter Ball. Being completely unable to pass up the opportunity to perve on frocks, glitter and three-piece suits, of course I went (red frock, corset, black boots instead of shiny heels because, sadly, it was raining like a motherfucker). The location was a small bar in the city, with a decidedly non-ballroom carpeted floor and not nearly enough space for the amount of gown that turned up. Still, I had plenty of eye-candy, new people to meet and new ways to meet them. It seems that partner dancing is quite the thing here, which may explain why no-one shows any inclination towards house music at all. So despite my declarations of total incompetance, I was asked to dance quite a few times, and it was lovely. I really enjoyed the beautiful formality of being asked to dance. I like this instant-intimacy of the body-contact dance partner (so relaxed and close and yet formal at the same time). It makes a nice change from bopping up and down in the general vicinity of someone who is cute and hoping they notice. It makes me even more determined to start taking dance classes soon.

Sunday lunchtime the lawyer called and invited me to a house party, I expect because I have been pestering her to hang out and this was the easiest way to appease me. It was a lot of fun. The crowd was a lot older, and it was a sober event, so those two elements kept my mind busy in analysis. They refer to a 'sober scene' over here, that there is as much as sober scene as a kink scene or a dance scene or a dyke scene. I liked that attitude. Which makes it all the worse, I suppose, that I went out afterwards and got ABSOLUTELY HAMMERED.

Ah, the L Word season premiere party... a huge room packed to the rafters with women, and they couldn't get the VCR to work. Hilarious! So we stood around and danced for a while. Perhaps in apology for the technical difficulty, perhaps just because she wanted to, a sexy woman in a chef's jacket and checked pants kept walking up to me, bending me back over her arm, and tipping a bottle of Absolut Vanilla into my mouth. I recall at one point making a "no more!" sign to her, and she shrugged, bent me over, and did it anyway. Good grief!

So at nearly midnight when they finally got the VCR going, I was rather inebriated. I went with the lawyer but she quickly disappeared into the crowd, so I was left with the insanely good-looking boy (from my first weekend here) and an assortment of fun, colourful people. Drunk glittertrash left in company of insanely good-looking boy in a dark room has got to be a bad idea. He pulled me up a chair and sat next to me. Somehow my hand was on his thigh. And oh dear goddess, I felt his packer through his jeans. All through the show. He left his hand on the small of my back. I had another girl sitting between my thighs (oh, was I sitting in a miniskirt with my knees apart and a girl between them? Yes, yes I was) and she had looped her arm through my leg and his so that her hand came to rest on his thigh as well. It was just a little knot of pumping pheremones, right there.

So after the show the girl between my thighs grabbed me by the necklace and pulled me down for a pash, and then ran away to the bar. "Hey Mama" came on. I danced. And was suddenly grabbed from behind by very direct hands (the boy. Grrrr!) and so continued the dancing, crotch to ass. Then the girl came back, and then we all went to another pub, and then it all got very, very messy.

My memory is a little hazy but I remember continuing to flirt outrageously with the boy, and with the girl, who was also flirting outrageously with the boy. I remember others of our entourage were doing a knicker-inspection, and the boy turned around and asked to see mine. I barely remember responding with something like- "Oh, and you think just because you're the cute boy that I'm going to bend over and show you my underwear just because you asked? Hah! If I'm showing mine, you're showing yours". It devolved into some sort of bargaining that wound up in absolute silliness. Underwear was shown (for Tom's benefit: I was wearing black rose-print lace french knickers). People got excited. And then I decided that going by previous form the boy would likely continue to flirt all night, and then leave me hanging. So I left with the girl instead.

We went to her place. Turns out she's a total hippy. But a rather sweet and endearing hippy. We had bad drunk sex and she tried to get me to stay over. Instead I left, got home at some completely unreasonable hour like 4am. To get up and come to a 9am class.

So of course you can imagine my current state of overwhelming health and vitality. Oh baby, oh baby, yeah.

Canings and Such Fun!

I got my first caning last night. I am all proud and glowing about it still. A very nice lady took off my skirt, bent me over her bench, and taught me what canes do. I didn't get a warm-up because there just didn't seem a good time for one. And that was OK. The cane in this context was about sensation play but my interest in canes broadly has to do with punishment and control, so the fierce and direct pain of a cane on un-warmed skin seems appropriate. The lady who was teaching me about canes was very, very good at it. She left criss-crossed welts on my ass and my thighs. Precision caning! Then she stood me up and gave me a hug and told me turn around and there were A LOT OF PEOPLE standing around watching us and I almost got shy. They all clapped though. And she told me not to put my skirt back on because she wanted people to see my marks, so I wandered around for the rest of the night in my knickers and stockings and shirt.

I also was single-tailed, but not for nearly long enough. And I played with a violet wand, which was so awesome! Like canes, I have seen violet wands used in the past but have never had an opportunity to enquire about them. They are even more fun than they look. The lady who was showing off that toy put the fine-pointed rake attachment on and drew lines on my arms with electricity. It felt amazing. I have to buy one of those sets. It is such a crazy-intense-unpredictable feeling, but not painful as such. You could torment someone with that for hours.

I came home and played with my camera afterwards, especially with the timer function so I could record the criss-cross welts on my backside. So now I have lots of pictures on my hard drive of my ass and my new (black satin with a red cherry bow!) knickers. Hurrah!

I digicam, therefor I am

I got the job!!!

< gloat />

HAH! You are now reading the blog of the Video Production Assistant at California's biggest gay porn distributor! That would be ME!

I am so excited. I got called in for my second interview yesterday- the production manager who was running the interview claimed this was a 'standard second round interview' (i.e I was merely one of many who had gotten a call-back) but it soon became clear from talking to the head designer and the CEO that they had already narrowed it down to me, and the second interview was mere formality.

I'm trying not to paint castles in the sky here, but this seems like the perfect opportunity. Everyone I have spoken to at the company has referred to the expectation that this will shift from a part-time position to a full-time position at the end of the semester, and that they have me in mind for future involvement with the web production team. They got excited about my tech support background and my interest (actually, my DEGREE in) computer-based media production. Hell, even if all this turns out to be is four months of cut-n-paste video editing that doesn't extend into anything more, it's still a huge leap forward into where I want to be.

So, the pay is crap, and we're still trying to work out my hours, and I need to get permission to even do the job from my department at uni, but I'm feeling rather pleased with myself right now.

Missy Higgins @ The Independant

For all the times I should've gone to see Missy Higgins in Sydney and I didn't. Why did I go this time, so far from home? Just a night I guess, a place to be. Anyway. It was beautiful. Amazing. She was supporting the John Butler Trio so she didn't sing for nearly long enough. I don't normally connect much to live vocal-plus-instrument music but I was totally wrapped up in her performance. She made me cry and clap and yell, all things I would not normally do for live music. I am blown away. So now I have the album and a bit of a crush.

We left as soon as she finished. I do not care about the John Butler Trio, and anything would be disappointing after her.

Email. Wow. I do not usually engage in purely electronic dynamics, partly because I am a complete snob about text quality if text is all there is. So it is a total surprise that of my outrageous propositions the other night, one has blossomed into quite the literary exchange. What well-executed headgames! It's nice to have a challenge to rise to.

In Bed With Fairy Butch

Saturday night, a dyke/trans strip night of infinitely more creativity than the last strip event I went to. I was the tip-girl, a vision in pink ruffles and my butterfly-sequin top. I met fun people. I danced and shook my hips so that the pink ruffled skirt flew out in all directions. I wore my little white ladies heels. I flirted and giggled and charmed like a pro. I saw a drag king strip to “Filthy/Gorgeous” down to nipple tassels, a spangled g-string, and the word “FREAK” across his chest. I saw three stunning boys strip out of some sort of athletic uniform down to white briefs. I saw a woman onstage as an eagle in a face-covering mask and huge wings. When I was moving through the crowd collecting tips for another dancer, the sexiest of all the boy dancers locked her arms around me to guard against the surging crowd for a moment. Not a word. Quietly melted into a puddle at her feet, then moved on to solicit some more. Yum.

I spent yesterday with my Aussie exchange kids. We rented videos and ate ice cream and cooked dinner. I laughed at how excited the other two were over cooking for themselves without picking up the phone and getting delivery. I showed them the little photo album Ms J made for me. They got excited about my bright friends. We watched some of the awful, awful Grammy Awards, drank some red wine, and called it a night.

Somehow the reality of living in San Francisco, California is much clearer to me when I’m hanging out with them. I don’t know why. Perhaps because they acknowledge the difference. They are both taking up pot-smoking because it’s what people our age do here (on a massive scale). I think I will stick to my bottles of South Australian red.

I hope that those were alone on V.Day had a marvelous time of it, and all the smug coupleds exchanged the requisite amount of bodily fluids for such an occasion. Me, I am spending the evening writing scandalous propositions to the local butch populace.

New Zine, Old Story

I'm working on a new zine (of course). It'll be interesting I suppose because a lot of the content is Sydney-derived and I haven't created much yet that is of San Francisco. So rather than being my 'goodbye' to Sydney zine or my 'here is San Francisco' zine it will be a confusing mess of thoughts between the two. Which is only appropriate, I think.

I just need to ask someone who has all the back issues of my zines (I didn't bring them with me): have I published the story below anywhere before except for in the student press? Is it in my prior zines? I genuinely can't remember. If it's not, it's going in my new one. I still love it.

Today is better. I sat out on the flat gravelled roof outside my window and played Tetris in the sun, then stood up and danced to the pop blaring from my laptop. I'm going out again tonight, again with no-one (had arranged to go with Slip but she has bailed). I think I might do a little better this time.

I wrote this three years ago:

In the earliest hours of the morning with the sequined and sparkling night still pumping insistently around us I found a girl between my thighs and touched her face. A smile flashed like neon on and off to show teeth then not teeth and her eyes couldn’t focus on me, they slid from me like oil on wet pavement, and she breathed laughter, deep in and heaving out. Her hands they gripped and twisted the skirt stretched out over my legs to make room for the straddling of her and it was plain: the ecstasy was strong within her.

She was beautiful and her joy hit hard, I wasn’t so close to earth myself. I couldn’t keep away from the warm silk velvet of her skin and my hands twined round her neck, stroking through her hair, up her face, down her breasts. I laughed and said:

"can we break it from here? Can we, please?"
and she turned to press her lips to the smooth curve of my upper arm as she replied to my blood and muscle:
"the revolution’s onnnn, bayby." The long growling curve of the sound in her jaw delighted me and I threw my head back in glee. The lights spun past my eyes and came to rest somewhere south. I hung suspended and spoke to the air.

"We could do it you know, we could take what we are and what we feel and we could make a revolution. It’s in the feeling, you know?" I snapped my head back up and arched my body around her, my forehead coming down to rest on hers. The draining of the blood was tidal from my brain. "The revolution is in feeling and in demanding to feel, it’s in not letting this bullshit displacement get under your skin- you know the displacement they try to shove down your throat, so you don’t feel you just imagine it and act out the lines of someone who really did feel it maybe a hundred years ago. Imagine discovering the feelings inside you and acting from them, imagine!"

The sweet smell of her skin permeated me as she fluttered her eyelashes against mine. Her hands slid around and touched the gap of skin between my clothes across my back.

"The revolution is in knowing" she said, her deep warm voice brushing against my cheeks and mouth. "It’s in seeing what you’re not supposed to see and knowing what the truth is."
"That’s so essentialist" I puzzled, brushing my nose beside hers. "There is no truth."
"There’s a better truth."
"There’s feeling"
"Kiss me"
And I did.

The morning had pushed on and the stars had faded when I led her by the hand across the road. My lips ached with her biting kisses and my arms ached with holding her but the dry powdered exhaustion was warm and welcoming. We took the all-night convenience by stealth, revolutionaries masquerading as two worn-out girls just turfed from the club. We wandered the aisles, consciousness slitted against the fluorescent, critiquing this, the height of what capitalism had to offer us.

"Ugh, barbeque shapes" she complained, and we moved on.

"eighty five varieties of chocolate and nothing good" I gloomed.

In the end we paid a dollar thirty five for a tub of yoghurt and ate it huddled on the petrol-soaked cement outside. My head against her shoulder, she fed me with a spoon.

"D’you think we’re just trying to reclaim the extreme?" I asked, watching the trickle of gay humanity evicted from the club startling at the harsh reality of daylight.

"Just because we look like a niche market doesn’t mean we’re safe" she said. "We can still smash them, they’re just less likely to see us coming now."

It was a comforting thought, and I smiled.
Turned, kissed her cheek, and took her home.

Grrrr

Tonight was infuriating. It didn't help I suppose that I've been feeling a bit fragile all day. Crying into my tea this morning, and all that. Wore my big fuck-off fake Chanel sunglesses (at 7am in the grey gloom) to hide the red eyes and just hide in general. That sort of day. Came home and perked myself up a bit after school, got dressed for an event that has been advertised everywhere for the past few weeks as "The" thing to go to this weekend. I got there about quarter past the opening time (cold and nervous and feeling entirely too conspicuous). There was already a huge crowd outside on the pavement. They had vastly underestimated the response they would get and had run out of space- they turned away at least as many people again as they had let in. Grr! I was on my own and couldn't see any of my familiar faces. They kept telling the crowd to go to the leather bar around the corner. I went and checked it out, but what would have been cute-femme garb in the right context (company of known, friendly leatherdykes) just made me look wierd and awkward alone in a men's leather bar. Grrr. One person I knew only very remotely told me on her way out: "don't worry! You're charming and vivacious, you'll meet people." I nearly spat at her. See Ali not be in the mood for the nuclear-level social energy output required!

So I left, feeling grumpy and hard-done by. The night was partially rescued by two people: the first an elaborately garbed boy, who stopped me to show off his big bag full of hand-made recycled leather, studs and chain accessories. He does trades, so I might swap him some hours web designing for a piece of rubberwear. We had a quick, furious cigarette on the street together and talked about trade economy. See, I was smoking! And talking to wierd punk boys! Crappy night! Stressed self! And then my date from the other night texted and invited me to go hang out with her for a while, which was rather nice.

Nothing happening, of course, so I am home and tired and going to bed at an indecently early hour for a Friday night. I am so disappointed in my evening (interesting company aside) that I may well do the unthinkable: recycle my entire outfit for an event tomorrow night. This outfit was too cute to be wasted on an average evening.

Pony Tales

So last night wound up being a bit of a big deal. I turned up to a munch for The Stampede (the local pony-play group) not knowing if it would even be on. It was of course. Nervousness and chattering and good times. A lot of people (ponies and others). They run outdoor events in Golden Gate Park. I will go. No sign of a potential trainer, but that's OK. Sweet to hang out with other ponies and get excited talking about different sorts of bits, and the finer points of control (through the bridle or through shoulder harnesses?).

It turned out that the ponies from the Munch (and a kitty, and a zebra in a full, glorious body-suit) were all going to see a film on down the road, so I joined them, with no idea what it was beyond "ponies from DC". So I bought my ticket and settled in next to the kitty, and the first of the double-feature started. There on the screen is Miss B in a cage. "ohmigodiknowher!" And then there is Miss C, and there are The Leatherdykes, and there is Mr G, and oh, of course, it's that documentary they were making last year! "Liberty in Restraint". Totally unexpected, that is what I get I suppose for going to movies without reading the bill first. It was fun, and I think it was actually very good. Miss C talking with blood smeared across her crown about silliness was my favourite bit.

The pony-play movie afterwards was also gorgeous. I noticed a few things- the ponies featured all looked like riding ponies, and their way of relating to people is different from a show-pony. And one of the rider-pony couples sexualised their dynamic extremely, and that made me uncomfortable. I was sitting there getting miffed for their lack of adherence to what is, to me, the pre-sexual romantic purity of pony play. To each their own, of course, but if anyone ever tried to "reward" me in pony-space by pinching my nipples I would step on them very heavily. And possibly bite.

My favourite scene was at the end: a truck pulling up to the ranch-house pulling a pony float. Very young girl with jodphurs and riding boots and fluffy, curly hair bounces and fidgets impatiently on the verandah. She sees the pony float, she bounds out pure excitement, pushes her hand into the float to pat her pony, leads him down the ramp, throws her arms around him and gives him the blissful, adoring hug of a girl in love with a horse. It was beautiful.

And after that, we were told that our ticket stubs got us into the re-opening night of a club called 'Bondage-a-go-go' for free. So I went to that. It was rather gothling-meets-SM-lite, but it was fun. The bondage being done on the main stage was beautiful, and some people were using the racks and suspension points upstairs to full effect. I was entirely inappropriately dressed (still in my clothes from school) but I hung around for a while enjoying listening to non-hip-hop music (angry gothling pop-rock instead, woo!). Eventually the overwhelmingly heterosexual energy propelled me out the door and I came home to get some sleep.

My head is all full of love-letters from a pony to her trainer. I couldn't stop bragging about Miss V all night. I think I was the only queer pony in the group (queer in the human-sense, because perhaps dressing up like a horse and pulling carts around is considered rather queer behaviour in itself). I think I do love the girlpony-lady dynamic a lot, and I have been lucky to train with one of the very best ladies around.

Hump

I danced last night more than I've danced since I've been here. This city is drowning in hip-hop. So far I'm coping but I think that's because it's still kind of new to me (and the DJs here stick to a wonderful no-more-than-2-minutes-per-song rule, which keeps it from getting too eye-scratchingly tedious). So I danced to hip-hop. I was the only person in the entire two-level club who wasn't wearing jeans. The person I was with and I were the only two people in the entire place who weren't humping madly against legs/hip bones/crotches/asses/mirrors/anything that presented itself (person I was with said: "I'm not saying that I'll never do that to you- but if I do, I expect you to slap me for it"). But it was fun. I saw some very attractive people. I saw an incredibly handsome butch boy playing stupid games with a very pretty femme girl, which felt a little bit enlightening. Overall the place felt a bit like being at Caesars on one of their obscure hip-hop nights, with only slightly less flannalette. Off to the side of the dance floor a butch cop (on duty, in uniform) stood not even trying to disguise the leer as she watched the girls.

I had a date yesterday afternoon. It was pleasant, and everything I expect a mostly-blind date to be: inoffensive, nervous, not particularly inspiring. At the second pub we went to we were dancing to the side of the bar and someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and a woman I have encountered before handed me a beer (remembering from last weekend what I drink) and walked off. Later on after I had ushered my date home I went to a club that the woman had mentioned to me as somewhere she might be- which is how we came to be dancing to hip-hop and watching people hump madly around us.

She's a lawyer. She buys Art. I could go there.

Take Your Mama Out

I have this sudden, admittedly crazy idea for my coming-home party, at some point in the as-yet defined future. Having noticed that my parents are deeply unhappy about the 'gay thing' as an abstract concept, but quite amenable to it as a demonstrable element of my life (i.e "here is my partner! see! Nice partner! Respect my life decisions!" only I am unlikely to have such a handy accessory as a life partner any time soon) I think I will drag them and all my of-age siblings and any random relatives who want to come... to the Imperial! For drag shows! Because left to think about anything too much, my parents have stupid reactions. But if I give them some sort of content to focus on then they will be so determined to be all hip and with-it that the small matter of their deep disappointment in me will fall by the wayside as they rush to have opinions about the state of Sydney drag. I think this will work on most of my extended family.

Yes, Ali's coming-out episode 436, brought to you by the Scissor Sisters. But, I think it will work! I'm taking suggestions on the best night of the week to do this.

Friday night was fun. After the meeting I hijacked some lesbians I found on the street and made them come to the Lexington with me, where their 8th Birthday Party was in full swing and the place was seething with women. I saw Jen Ro, and I won a hat that makes me look like a Texas dyke (according to one of the hijacked lesbians) and in a brief detour to an art show, I saw a woman stripping on an office desk. And then another woman got up on the bar at the Lex and stripped. So yes, plenty enough breasts and art to consider it a worthy night out.

New User Intro

I have an interview on Monday for a website maintenance/Flash production job at a gay porn company. I'm really excited. Would that not be perfect?

Thursday night last week I went to a Butch-Femme Social event across the bay in Oakland (which is really not very far away, despite San Franciscans insistence that anything involving a bridge is too far). The good-looking presenter from the play party was there. He asked me, "So, what is it that you're into?" and I said "well, you've met me at two places so far. That covers a pretty big swathe of it..." He kept telling me about all these newbie-friendly nights the local leather group is putting on, and I kept thinking "Do I look like I don't know what a safe word is, or what a sharps container is, or not to walk within the swing-circle of someones whip?". But, look! It's under 25! It must be new and adorably clueless!

Resentment aside, I think I'm going to go to the 'newbie' gathering tonight. I'm into the 'new stuff to learn' vibe, just not into the 'learning stuff automatically means you're clueless and shouldn't be trusted with anything sharper than kid's craft scissors' thing so much. I have my happy medium at home: we respect each other's knowledge, learn new stuff together, but don't feel like we have to pretend to know everything. Same happy medium is proving difficult to find here. Anyway, it could be a nice place to meet people. And I guess at this point meeting people ranks slightly higher than my touchy pride.

Two weeks and counting

I have gambled an independent wealth of life on a chance. And these things I knew before I left.

That I would miss layers of familiarity and tension everywhere I go. Miss the music and the dancing and the watching girls out the corner of my eyes. Miss counting down the weeks until the next big dance party, assembling the outfit not just for the night but for the night before, the morning after, the night after that. The nightclubs so closely integrated as the backdrops for the bits of my life that matter. I knew I would miss my eyes gritty from eyeliner and glitter, stumbling into a pub where I know no matter what my state, someone waits for me all longing and admiration. Miss kisses and someone in my arms, the claws of self-doubt in my gut or the swagger of absolute certainty. I’d miss the filthy, bustling street where you can go into a pub at 10am on no sleep and drink beer and play pool and put songs on the jukebox. Waiting for the night again.

I love the mess and trash and intensity. That is my life, and I made myself rich with it. Sex and drugs and tribal beats. These are the treasures we grant currency. Fiercely competitive dancing in a contest we would never admit, life advice swapped in the stolen breaths between stomping feet. Oh Mandy, oh Sveta, how you transported me. Made me a possessed doll, projecting with fierce intensity out of reality into anywhere else. That was my reality. Is my reality.

I have a life that looks like a page from modern urban fiction. See the too-bright stars who are my friends and the way we rip each other apart, the drugs always lubricating so we can go on another night, another party, without falling to pieces. Lines of speed off the back of the CD case of the most recent clubbing hit, a rolled note passed like a hug. You can crush a pill with a razor and rack it up, mixed in with the speed- it might be pink and sparkly, or blue, or any colour of the pilling rainbow. We have little gelatin capsules in baggies for the main event, crystal or MDMA powder or, if it’s a big night, both. The worse it tastes the better it is for you, for the you that lives tonight at least. You will stand in a sea of people and throw your eyes to the glowing steam that is the roof above and give praise. Give thanks. Give love.

And the rest of life, crowded in around with it’s demands, runs a distant second. It is possible to go on forever, so long as you work just enough, study just enough, eat just enough to get through to the next magic night. We are not addicted to the drugs we carry, with a little paranoia, in various cavities of our outfits and persons. They are the vehicles, not the journey or the destination. We are junkies only for that high, that magic, of the night itself, the music, the way your body convulses to the beat when there is no other option. We are the most loyal of subjects.

And now this. Somewhere over the Pacific I fell asleep and had a dream of queers living fiercely in the damp and comforting underground. Stepped off the plane into a place that has not been mapped in my language. We are all unwritten here, our tragedies don’t touch this place. The heroes of our razor-sharp world might as well remain myths. I long for this.

Maybe

Yesterday was a pretty low day, the first I guess since I've been here. I'm watching out for that, a bit. I think it's better to allow myself the occasional indulgence of a quiet, gloomy introspection day than to expect that I will be at all times up and bounding about in the adventure. So yesterday I sat home all day, wrote some things (one of which I may submit to Revelling in a slightly altered form) and read my diary from three years ago. I was a lot smarter when I was 19, I think, or I had more time to sit around thinking about things. It wasn't necessarily the best life, but it produced some thoughtful output. I wouldn't mind trying to settle back into that groove. I know logically that throwing myself into a social hurricane will not be the only mark of success on this adventure, and besides, I can't really afford it. Until I find a job.

Today is a much better day. Things progress, I'm getting uni stresses out of the way. It is either much warmer than when I got here, or I've acclimatised a little. My body is still in shock from the summer-winter transition, I've had a nasty cough and sore throat (good thing I haven't had the chance to kiss anybody yet). Today I'm wearing a t-shirt and no stockings, no coat, no scarf. Scandalous! And my huge, square, fake Chanel sunglasses. This I think is how people who live in cold climates get conned into thinking they experience warmth, when it is really only not quite so freezing.

I discovered in the course of orientation that if I get a paid internship at the end of my study semester, I can extend my visa until October. Not that it'll be easy (even the unpaid internships here are fought for tooth and nail- I can only imagine the blood and tears involved in landing a paid position) but it's worth a try I think. A visa extension means I get to stay for Folsom, one of the world's biggest Leather festivals, and spend summer in California, and maybe save up a little money for when I'm in Europe. I'm going to try for it, and diary, that means if I get it, I may not be home until Christmas. How do you feel about that? I have to admit it scares me a little.